Nasa Langley Man Heads Virginia American Legion

Roger Messier, a longtime researcher for the nation's space program, has been elected state commander of the 44,000 members in the Virginia American Legion.

He was installed in office during the 71st annual state convention of the American Legion earlier this year in Roanoke.

The Poquoson resident is head of the System Development Support Section, which is part of the System Engineering Division at NASA Langley Research Center.

His section performs environmental tests on spaceflight hardware.

"We do the testing from cradle to flight," explains Messier, who joined NASA Langley in 1955. "We also check out equipment after it has been in space."

He and others in the section at the Langley center are excited about the return from space of the Long Duration Exposure Facility or LDEF, set for mid-December.

The LDEF, a Langley project, is an orbiting experiment rack that has been floating around in space since it was launched in 1983. The passive platform was scheduled for retrieval a year later, but space programs with higher priority displaced the retrieval plan. The delay grew into years after the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986.

The System Development Support Section has been involved in LDEF since its inception. "We were also involved in the launch when it went into space, and we will be involved in the recovery and in processing the experiments," says Messier. "The experiments dealt in a variety of projects, from thermal to radiation and meteorites to seeds."

Plans now are to retrieve the LDEF on the third day of a shuttle mission tentatively scheduled to start on Dec. 18.

"The data we glean from the 57 experiments on the LDEF will be invaluable for future space programs," says Messier.

"The longer exposure period for the experiments will significantly enhance the information we get from them. We've never had that kind of information from space before."

Researchers hope the experiments will lead the way in helping them in selecting the right kinds of materials building future structures for space, which must stay in orbit for long periods of time. These would include sensor platforms, earth observation platforms, the space station, and the space packages planned for the Star Wars or SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program.

The LDEF experiments were set up to analyze the space environment and gauge its affects on various earthly substances, and were designed to stay in orbit for a year.

Messier has been involved in space-oriented research programs since the very start of his career with NASA at Langley, beginning with the Space Task Group and the follow-on Mercury program for manned space flight in 1959.

"When the Mercury program moved to Houston, Texas, in 1962, I followed. Later, I worked with the Gemini, Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab and the space shuttle programs," he says.

"There was an opportunity to return to NASA Langley in 1979 and I came back here. I like this part of the country. Besides, my wife, Bettie, is a Poquoson native."

The couple have four children and two grandchildren.

Besides his work on space research programs, Messier has been very active as a member of the American Legion's Holloway-Moore Post 273 in Poquoson, where he has held a number of offices and headed various committees over the years.

As leader of the state legionaires, he will emphasize the organization's involvement in helping to alleviate the problems American youths face as well as the American Legion's traditional role in supporting veterans' benefits and fair treatment.

Messier, who was chairman of the Poquoson School Board for two years, is strongly behind efforts to raise the level of the American educational system. He believes all citizens should support local schools and their projects.

"People have always motivated me," he says . "I am also interested in the community and want to know what's going on at home, in the country and in the world.

"I like to get involved with people to work for a better world. "

Though he doesn't have a lot of leisure time, the Peninsula man does like to fish, work on his automobile and take on building projects at home. He built a deck on his home this year. "I started from scratch and learned as I did it. That was quite a challenge," he says.

For quiet moments, he likes to listen to New Orleans-style jazz and music from the big band era.

His biggest desire has been to travel to the moon. "I sure would like to board a space shuttle and fly to the moon. I wish there were an opportunity to explore the universe, but I may be a little old for that now," he says, adding that his involvement with the Apollo manned space flight program and man's subsequent landing on the moon have been the highlights of his career.